Enough: Learning from Bio-Materials

About

What happens when we take a natural residue, like an eggshell, long enough for it to teach us? Experimenting with the making of bioplastics and creative writing we will engage the possibility of tactile, relational inquiry and creation.

This 5-day practical and theoretical workshop explores what happens when we take one humble material — a bark, an eggshell, a piece of chitin — and stay with it long enough for it to teach us. “Enough” becomes a question of depth rather than quantity: How abundant can one matter become when we truly attend to it?

Through experiments with natural residues participants will engage with modes of tactile inquiry, relational ways of creation and the shift from knowledge production towards “knowledge creation” (Zuleika Bibi Sheik). We will make bioplastics and biomaterials — but more importantly, we will think with them. This process of making is interwoven with inputs and a guided process of reading and writing exercises.

Drawing from new materialist and eco-feminist thinkers such as Jane Bennett, Astrida Neimanis, and Stacy Alaimo, as well as alchemical and magical traditions, the workshop engages with knowledge concepts that undermine and question progress, (capitalist) accumulation, and newness as guiding research principles. Throughout the workshop, participants will be supported in reflecting on the norms and desires that underlie their individual research and artistic practices.

Participants will work in groups and on individual or collaborative projects. Participants will read and discuss together, learn how to produce their own bioplastics and are introduced to a set of methods from the areas of critical epistemology and creative writing. An excursion and/or a guest lecture will introduce participants to contexts relevant for the workshop topic in the local Berlin art scene

Course leader

Dr. Annika Haas & Petja Ivanova

Target group

This course is for participants from all disciplines that are motivated to deconstruct their own approach on theoretical and practical levels. The capacity to understand and to communicate concepts and contributions to the course in the English language is required to follow the course. Depending on the participants, work in smaller groups can also take place in other languages than English

Fee info